Bitcoin transaction fees are approaching $6 due to increased activity in ordinals, a variant of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on the bitcoin blockchain. This surge in demand has been driven by active projects such as $RATS and those minted by $BEES, gpts and HALV, according to BitInfoCharts.
On Monday, the vibrant market activity pushed last week’s Ordinal sales to $18.33 million, an increase of 191%, according to CryptoSlam. This spike in fees and market activity mirrors the highs seen in June, when secondary sales of Bitcoin Ordinals also peaked. While October’s secondary sales for these Ordinals surpassed $16 million, November has already surpassed that with a total of $18.5 million so far.
Dune Analytics noted a resurgence in the rate of Ordinal registrations after a slowdown in October, with total registrations now exceeding 38 million. CryptoSlam data also shows an 18.4% increase in Ordinals buyers to 13,176 and an 80.9% increase in weekly transactions to 35,786.
The increased competition adds a significant number of transactions for bitcoin miners to process on-chain, congesting the mempool and slowing down transactions without high fees. According to GeniiData, nearly one million such “mints” occurred last week. Live data from the mempool shows over 120,000 unconfirmed bitcoin transactions, up from less than 30,000 in early October.
This congestion is proving beneficial for bitcoin miners, whose income is soaring due to higher transaction fees. Glassnode data shows that on Sunday, 8.5% of miners’ income came from increased fee rates – the highest daily share since early June.
